The present invention relates to the accessing of files in interactive computer controlled display system operations.
The 1990""s decade has been marked by a technological revolution driven by the convergence of the data processing industry, the communications industry and the consumer electronics industry. This advance has been even further accelerated by the extensive consumer and business involvement in the Internet over the past few years. It seems as if virtually all aspects of human endeavor in the industrialized world will potentially involve human-computer interfaces; especially such interfaces to communication networks as the Internet. As a result of these profound changes, there is a need to make computer directed activities accessible to a great many people who had been computer illiterate or, at best, computer indifferent.
One function which developers of display interfaces have been addressing is ease of use in the interactive user handling of data files. No matter how intuitive and easy to use an interface may be in its use of icons related to three-dimensional real life to make even the novice user feel at home with the interface, in most human/computer transactions a point is reached when the user must relate to computer files. The ease of use facility relative to file handling has certainly improved with the advances in the use of displayed file icons and a variety of xe2x80x9cdrag and dropxe2x80x9d expedients which facilitate the interactive user moving of documents between files, merging of files, shifting of files between directories as well as creating and erasing files. However, the increased usage of the computer as described above has increased the demand for interactive file handling to more than offset these small gains. Since the file is the basic unit of storage that enables the computer to distinguish between sets of data, there are up to thousands of files in a computer operation. Depending on the type of file, the user has greater or lesser control as to the frequency with which he needs to interactively access the file during computer usage.
Perhaps, with the exception of accessing document files in conventional word processing applications, accessing of computer files during operations still remains one of the more complex interactive tasks which the less sophisticated computer user regularly encounters. Even in user friendly graphical user interface systems which extensively use icons, the user often has to wade through several hierarchical layers of directories, subdirectories and files in order to access particular files.
The present invention provides a solution to the above problems by providing a computer controlled user interactive display system having the customary provision of user access to the files stored therein through the display of a plurality of interactive objects which may be icons or even text representing the files usually in an arrangement of hierarchical screens. However, in addition, the system has means for displaying a set of high interactivity objects separate from the display of the plurality of objects. This set of high activity objects is developed through means for monitoring user interactivity with respect to the basic plurality of interactive objects and means responsive to the monitoring means for selecting a set of high interactivity objects having user interactivity greater than selected levels. The system further includes means for displaying the set of high interactivity objects responsive to any file request so that the high interactivity objects are immediately displayed in response to any file request. In this manner, the user is presented with a much smaller number of file objects than conventional representing that he is more likely to use based upon past activity.
Preferably, user interactive input is provided to enable the user to select the levels of interactivity which will determine which objects will be in said high interactivity set. In accordance with a supplementary aspect of the present invention, means are provided for removing objects from said high interactivity object set if the interactivity of said objects becomes less than said selected levels.
Since directories and subdirectories may be considered as files, the present invention could, under appropriate circumstances, be set to operate at any directory or subdirectory level in the file hierarchy. In such a case, for example at the directory level, then the means for monitoring the interactive objects would monitor the interactivity of objects, each respectively representing a directory group of files and the selected levels of interactivity would be the interactivity levels of such objects representing directory groups of files. In such a case, the objects representing directory groups of files would provide the set of high interactivity objects.